For some rooms in a building, it is desirable to control sound transmission. Such rooms include home theaters, recording studios and offices in which confidential conversations take place. In such an office, the control of sound transmission takes the form of sound proofing to prevent the escape of intelligible conversation from the room. This is true to a lesser extent with the home theater or recording studio, where the emphasis is on controlling the sonic quality inside the room.
An approach to control sound transmission is to attach acoustically significant panels, be they absorbers or diffusers, to the room's surfaces. Examples of such acoustically significant panels are disclosed in copending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/871,021, filed Jun. 6, 1997, on behalf of McGrath et al. and entitled "Acoustical Room Paneling and Method of Installation," the entire contents of which are hereby incorporated by reference.
To initially tune a home theater or a recording studio, the walls and/or ceiling must, at first, be covered by the panels. Then, it is usually necessary to change at least a few panels from being acoustical absorbers to acoustical dispersers/diffusers and/or vice-versa. This requires removing the fasteners from the first panel and reinstalling them through either the first panel after it has been reversed or an entirely different second panel.
Typically, the panels are attached using conventional fasteners, e.g., drywall screws in rooms having walls formed of drywall attached to studs. Drilling pilot holes in the panels for such screws or screwing through the panels causes minor damage to the panels. Screwing, unscrewing and rescrewing panels is time consuming and protracts the process of tuning a room.
Nor is this the last time that such an attaching/detaching process is likely to be required. If someone changes the furniture and/or window treatments in the home theatre, the room should be retuned. Such redecoration is likely to occur a only few times, at most. In a recording studio, however, the need for retuning can arise daily, and possibly more frequently. For example, if a recording studio is tuned for vocal sessions on Monday, then it should be retuned for string sessions on Tuesday, retuned for percussion sessions on Wednesday, etc.
Not all recording studios are permanently constructed. Temporary recording studios are becoming more prevalent. A musical group might wish to record in an ancient castle or at a remote location because of the location's ambience. A temporary recording studio can significantly improve the quality of the recording. Important to the success of a temporary recording studio is its ease of assembly/disassembly. The need for easy attachment/detachment of panels, as discussed above, contributes greatly to the ease of the temporary recording studio's assembly/disassembly. Moreover, a temporary recording studio, once assembled, is as likely to be reconfigured to accommodate different recording sessions as a permanently constructed recording studio.